CHAPTER I

NOMEN ET OMEN


In seeking other than in myself--as men will--the causes of my
tribulations, I have often inclined to lay the blame of much of the ill
that befell me, and the ill that in my sinful life I did to others, upon
those who held my mother at the baptismal font and concerted that she
should bear the name of Monica.

There are in life many things which, in themselves, seeming to the vulgar
and the heedless to be trivial and without consequence, may yet be causes
pregnant of terrible effects, mainsprings of Destiny itself. Amid such
portentous trifles I would number the names so heedlessly bestowed upon us.

It surprises me that in none of the philosophic writings of the learned
scholars of antiquity can I find that this matter of names has been touched
upon, much less given the importance of which I account it to be deserving.

Possibly it is because no one of them ever suffered, as I have suffered,
from the consequences of a name. Had it but been so, they might in their
weighty and impressive manner have set down a lesson on the subject, and so
relieved me--who am all-conscious of my shortcomings in this direction-
from the necessity of repairing that omission out of my own experience.

Let it then, even at this late hour, be considered what a subtle influence
for good or ill, what a very mould of character may lie within a name.